1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a time-accounting system with optimized management.
It can be applied in particular, to accounting for paid or regulated parking times.
This application is, however, not restrictive, and the invention can generally be applied when a period has to be accounted for by the gradual consumption, as and when time elapses, of a credit of parking units that have been allocated beforehand to the user.
The term "time-accounting system" refers to an apparatus constituted, for example, by a box, preferably a portable one, that is designed to be placed behind the windscreen of a vehicle and works in cooperation with a prepaid electronic ticket, for example a memory card, to decrement fee units, memorized in the card, according to the parking time. This type of device can be used to eliminate the need for fixed individual posts (of the pavement parking meter type) or posts used in common by groups of vehicles (of the type installed at the entrances to parking lots). The user automatically pays the parking fees by introducing a prepaid memory card into his box. The boxes are generally sold, loaned or given out on hire by local authorities or their agents who sell parking units in the form of cards of a different type for each distinct area of validity, in this case for each local authority. The validity of the parking can be verified by means of a display device on which there appear the various elements of information needed by the checking staff, for example the number of the parking zone selected by the user, a code identifying notably the type of card introduced by the user into the box and representing the town or city in which the parking is being done and, as the case may be, an information element indicating a situation of infringement of the rules, and the number of fee units still available in the card. The memories of the cards may be either rewritable or irreversibly written.
2. Description of the Prior Art
A device such as this is described, for example, in the French patent No. 87/06776 filed on behalf of the SOCIETE INTERNATIONAL POUR L'INNOVATION. The device described is a box designed to receive memory cards containing credits of parking units. The box has means to provide electrical coupling with each card introduced therein, and a writing circuit. This writing circuit enables the irreversible recording of an electronic memory position of the card introduced into the box, this circuit being periodically triggered under the control of a clock circuit, so that the successive recordings of the memory positions of the card introduced into the box correspond to the gradual consumption, as and when time elapses, of the credit of parking units remaining in the card.
This prior art device further includes means for the temporary memorization of parking units, located in the box. It is provided that these temporary memorizing means are able to collect a balance of parking units initially contained in a card. This corresponds, for example, to the case where the user feels that he does not have enough parking units in a first card and decides to empty the contents of this card into the temporary memory of the box, so as to insert a second card into the box and thus automatically increase the available credit of parking units in the system.
In one variant, it is also possible to provide for the contents of any card introduced into the box to get emptied into the temporary memory of the box, when the content of said card is smaller than a pre-determined number of units.
This document also provides for the use of the system in several towns or cities through the consumption of units contained in a single card. The card is purchased in one of the cities, and the system memorizes each of the successive parkings. A regular system of compensation is used to distribute the sums coming from the sale of the card among the different cities as a function of the real use of the card sold, for example as a function of the total number of hours of parking in each city.
However, this prior art system has a number of drawbacks.
Its design is based, indeed, on a certain philosophy of use that has some promising features but also certain limits. More precisely, this system proposes to satisfy two imperatives: firstly, to enable the user to use his "residual card balance", namely the little unconsumed balances and, secondly, to provide the system with a number of hours of credit sufficient to cope with any duration of parking desired by the user.
Now, accepting the latter constraint entails the drawback of making it necessary for the temporary memory of the box to have a large capacity. It may also show vulnerability to certain types of fraud.
Furthermore, this prior art system proposes a relatively complex form of management when a use involves several cities.
Finally, it does not resolve the situation where the conditions of use lead to the consumption of fractions of parking units.
The invention seeks to overcome these various drawbacks.